There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
HANNAH ARENDTThere is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.
HANNAH ARENDTA life without thinking is quite possible; it then fails to develop its own essence – it is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. Unthinking men are like sleepwalkers
HANNAH ARENDTSlavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself.
HANNAH ARENDTJustice demands seclusion, it permits sorrow rather than anger, and it prescribes the most careful abstention from all the nice pleasures of putting oneself in the limelight.
HANNAH ARENDTThere is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.
HANNAH ARENDTIf the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to ‘demand’ its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it—the quality of temptation.
HANNAH ARENDTLove, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
HANNAH ARENDTOnly the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil comes from a failure to think.
HANNAH ARENDTRevolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.
HANNAH ARENDTWe noted before that the passion of compassion was singularly absent from the minds and hearts of the men who made the American Revolution.
HANNAH ARENDTEvil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
HANNAH ARENDTLoving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.
HANNAH ARENDTWe first become aware of freedom or its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in the intercourse with ourselves.
HANNAH ARENDTIn the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.
HANNAH ARENDT